Classroom Connection

KIPP Academies- A Tale of "Outliers"

  

1. KIPP students designing a school mascot bracelet using Inventor 

2. Student catapult design for the 2009 Tech Challenge

3. KIPP student's work on designing a community skate park

    I recently found myself unable to put down Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Outliers, the Story of Success”. Outliers, as Gladwell suggests, are often viewed as those rare individuals who, because of some magical set of conditions are able to achieve enormous success where many others either meet with failure or at best achieve mediocrity. By digging into real life stories- some about our popular success stories and many about seemingly “ordinary” people, the author ultimately makes the argument that while chance and “magical circumstances” do play a role in building success, there are other factors related to persistence and community support that can turn the tide for people, diverting them from a path towards failure to a trajectory of personal and professional success.
     As I turned to page 250, my attention was riveted by what the author had to say about KIPP Academy programs. While I don’t want to give away the story, I did find a great deal of inspiration and hope in this section. Hope, based on the fact that the KIPP programs (along with many emerging innovative educational programs) have demonstrated that despite the challenges students may inherit, schools (leaders, staff and community), when willing to break from tradition and engage students in new ways can have a profound impact on nurturing success.
     When in 2007 Autodesk teamed up with Kipp Summit Academy in San Lorenzo, CA they were helping to create the sorts of conditions that Gladwell identifies as crucial for success. Using Autodesk Inventor software, Kipp staff members have created opportunities for students to become real world problem solvers with many of their efforts aimed at giving back to the community.  The academic knowledge, technical skills and relationships derived from these school-community efforts are pivotal in helping students find their own path to success.

Six A's

  

So, here’s my confession… I’ve been so wrapped up in my dissertation studies on project based learning that I’ve missed several opportunities for postings. But the time I’ve spent reading, interviewing students and teachers at High Tech High San Diego, writing and re-writing has given me lots to share in this blog. So let’s start off this week with another entry about the KIPP Summit Academy,San Lorenzo, CA. This school was the recipient of a gift from Autodesk and among the many projects students have worked on this year is the TECH challenge presented by the San Jose Tech museum. In sending me some of her documentation on their entry, KIPP teacher Sylvia Gonzales included this note: “I have found that there are no limitations on what our students can create in Autodesk.  They always seem to go beyond the module or lesson to create their own designs.  At times, when they come up with an idea and I cannot show them how to do what they want – they experiment and that is where the real learning takes place”.  What struck me was her use of the term “real learning”.  What was she getting at- how does this learning different than other types of learning?  I’ll be relying to her e-mail with a suggestion that she take a look at a book titled “Real Learning- Real Work" by Adria Steinberg. The author suggests that the use of projects as a classroom pedagogy integrates what she coined as the “Six A’s- Authenticity, Academic Rigor, Applied Learning, Active Exploration, Adult Relationships, and  Assessment Practices.

If you go to the 2009 Tech challenge on the Web, you’ll get a sense of how the projects that the KIPP students worked on integrate the six A’s.  As noted on the site this challenge involved developing a device that can deliver a payload of up to 6 geological instruments (6 ping pong balls) to the top of the volcano in 3 minutes. The volcano will be 10 ft high and you must launch your device 20 ft away from the volcano. Read about the challenge and see where the A’s come into play.  In talking and reading about all of the problems inherent in our current educational system I can’t help but think that paying closer attention to how this configuration of A’s might steer us in the right direction for true educational reform.

Multiple Pathways Gaining Attention

In a previous blog I had written about the Multiple pathways movement.  In the past four months I’ve had an opportunity to take a close look at one of the model multiple pathway schools, High Tech High, San Diego, CA and I’m impressed with what I’ve seen!

In CA the topic has gained a great deal of attention. WestEd is currently developing the Assembly Bill 2648 Multiple Pathways Report. “Assembly Bill 2648 (Bass) requires the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop, in conjunction with specified stakeholders, a report that explores the feasibility of establishing and expanding additional career multiple pathway programs in California.

Guiding principles of pathways
• Pathways prepare students for postsecondary education and career.
• Pathways connect academics to real-world applications.
• Pathways lead to a full range of postsecondary opportunities.
• Pathways improve student achievement.

Core components of pathways:
 
•A challenging academic component prepares students for success in California’s community colleges and universities, as well as in apprenticeships and other post-secondary programs.

•A demanding technical component delivers concrete knowledge and skills through a cluster of four or more technical courses.

•A work-based learning component that offers opportunities to learn through real-world experiences.

•Supplemental services that support students in a challenging program of study.
Multiple Pathways

•This approach promotes the implementation of multiple pathways in a school district.

If you have an interest in Multiple Pathways, you may want to join in an on-line forum hosted by WestEd

Problem Based Learning - KIPP Style

  

  Last year I had the opportunity to introduce the Autodesk DesignkKids curriculum to teachers at the KIPP Summit Academy. (KSA) is a free public middle school founded for historically underserved students and families in and around San Lorenzo, CA.  The acronym KIPP stands for Knowledge is Power Program; the activities that KIPP students have worked on using DesignKids underscores the value in acquiring knowledge through relevant, real-world experiences. I’ve been giving the notion of Knowledge a lot of thought and it strikes me that there is a huge difference between knowledge and the acquisition of information. Knowledge involves a type of learning where students take ownership by making connections between school and applications to the world around them. I’ve been thinking that there are four major factors that come into play when we try to create opportunities for acquiring knowledge. These four include Relationships, Evidence, Presentations and Assessment.  In the project depicted above, students developed relationships with the local city government to help develop new concepts for an outdoor skate park; their evidence was produced through virtual models generated with Autodesk Inventor and their presentations included 3d animations created with the software. The KIPP project teacher, Sylvia Gonsalves took this notion of relationships further, by inviting an engineering instructor for the local community college to evaluate the projects and offer students insights regarding careers in Engineering.  I’m convinced that this type of Project Based Learning (PBL) approach has to be seen as a critical element of school reform. In the next several blogs, I want to explore Project Based Learning using KIPP and several other educational programs as models.  In the next blog we’ll take a look at a project KIPP students worked on based on the TECH 2008 Challenge program sponsored by the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation. I’d encourage you to check out the Tech Museum website regarding the 2009 Challenge.  The presentation date for winning entries for that initiative will take place on April 26th.

New Learning

  

      In the course of many years’ worth of reading on educational reform and the inadequacies of the U.S. K-12 system I have encountered numerous articles and reports advocating for a new type of 21st century education. A recent article on Edutopia’s website captures the essence of what folks from business, government and education are saying. As anyone in K-12 understands, NCLB legislation has profoundly impacted what and how we teach.  I loved this comment in the article:

“Let's assume the No Child Left Behind Act works fine and that by 2014 every student meets the targeted standards and passes his or her state's exit exam. Will those students be successful as citizens and workers in the twenty-first century?– Not a chance!

                                                                                  
The reality from my perspective and based on a lot of reading on the subject is that students are growing up in a globalized world that demands a new type of education that is radically different than the dominant 20th century model structured by the belief that knowledge is largely transmitted to students by teachers and texts. In fact the idea that knowledge can be transmitted is in fact a dubious notion. Advocates for a new paradigm of education stress the importance of students becoming critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators and problem solvers.  In the landmark book, How People Learn, (2000) the authors emphasize the importance of what they term “active learning” to support students in the development of  these 21st century competencies.  The authors stress the need for people to take control of their learning by engaging in a generative process of self evaluation and articulated reflection to recognize what they currently know, where knowledge gaps exist, how they can develop strategies to assess the validity of information and knowledge sources and ultimately how they can construct their own meaning as they encounter those sources. It strikes me that this take on what is known about learning supports the types of project based learning activities where the sorts of tools and curriculum that Autodesk provides is absolutely on target.

What I'd like to see more of are case studeis where we not only showcase student work but where we can take a close look at how students are thinking- What connections are they making between their clasroom work and the outside world? How are they assessnig what they know in order to devise strategies to fill in the gaps and advance their learning? How are they engaing in collaborations; how successful are those collaborations; how do they use technology to facilitate colaborations?

I invite educators to share their reactions to these ideas and to invite students to share their personal stories about learning by postng to this blog.

The Digital Youth Project

 In both reading about and directly experiencing American K-12 education, I am struck by the incredible disconnect between what happens in school and what happens when kids step outside the classroom into a culture dominated by digital media. Lap tops, I-pods, cell phones, digital cameras, you-tube, web-cams, my space, face book- these are among the exploding array of new media tools that youth culture is using to invent new means of socializing, creating, sharing and assessing multiple streams of entertainment and information. Standing in stark contrast to this landscape of digital media are the hours spent by students sitting inside classrooms designed around an archaic, 20th century model of education that is far too often out of synch with the realities of work and life in the 21st century.  

 A lot of adults might watch kids interact with digital media and wonder if the they are just killing time by socializing or seeking entertainment instead of learning. The issue of learning and digital media was the focus of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Youth Project.  Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use. Read this study and I think your ideas about students and media may be altered.  The study suggest a lot of learning is occurring as students participate in the digital society.  As educators I think we need to pay close attention to how new media reshapes where and how school is conducted.

Green School Competition

     In my last posting I mentioned that while attending the CA Green Schools summit I was introduced to the School of the Future Design Competition.  The contest, sponsored by Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) was developed for middle school students “to illustrate the kind of creativity that students bring to the planning and design process. The competition highlights the importance of well-planned, high performance, healthy, safe and sustainable schools that foster student achievement and enhance community vitality”.
     The winners of last year’s competition were students from the Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School. The team used Autodesk Revit to design a school that incorporates four major renewable energy sources such as; Solar, Hydro, Geothermal and Wind powered systems.  Recycling, composting and rooftop gardens were also in the design. Autodesk created a posting about this team that you may want to check out. I’d encourage middle school teachers to check out the competition guidelines; an extensive curriculum in PDF format is available. If you do consider entering a team, I’d suggest that a great introduction to the project can be the PBS DVD series E2 design –“The Economies of Being Environmentally Conscious”. The series, with funding from Autodesk, provides a number of  real world case studies that demonstrate, from large to small scale, how design can play a vital role in reversing our global climate crisis.  You may also want to checkout another DVD title the “11th Hour”   which like an Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, helps define the environmental problems that our students have inherited.  Offering students a solid background regarding the magnitude of the environmental crisis can help set the stage for their design efforts.

GREEN WASH

I just left my first session at the California Green Schools Summit – this particular work shop on building green schools was hosted by the US Green Building Council- the folks that sponsor the LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Here’s a term the speakers used that I hadn’t hear before - “Greenwash”.  This refers to all the hype around green that is more about being politically correct or creating a marketing ploy than about developing innovative strategies to create a sustainable environment.

Despite our current economic crisis, the speakers expressed a great deal of optimism and hope regarding President-elect Obama’s commitment to create a stimulus package with green jobs and sustainability taking a place at the top of the agenda for economic recovery. The USGBC speakers expressed confidence in that we will soon see a great deal of effort put into developing green schools where the building and curriculum place an emphasis on sustainability.  The challenge is to get beyond the Greenwash and focus on those policies and actions that can have a significant impact on the future.

While it looks like it is too late for this year I’m especially excited by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) Schools for the Future: Student Design Competition. The School of the Future Student Design Competition “dares students to think creatively about designing tomorrow's green schools, and takes the learning process to the completion of a formal school building design project”.  Intended for middle and elementary schools competition throws out this challenge: “How would you connect the learning environment to the community in a school of the future? What would a typical day be like in your school of the future? How will your school of the future preserve the environment”?   I’m going to check this out in more detail and share that information with you.Have any of you entered the competition?  How are you usng Autodesk products to develop the designs?

As a teacher I’m constantly looking for new curriculum resources related to Green Technology. I found this one offered by The Department of Energy that seems to have a wide range of resources for elementary and secondary students.  I’d also be very interested in finding out resources that others in the community are aware of so they can be shared.

Green Schools

A few months ago the superintendent of my school district asked if I would help lead an effort to promote a green schools initiative. Like most of us, I had a general understanding of the term “green”.  Open up the newspaper, magazine or go-on-line and green is everywhere from product advertisements to presidential speeches. In the past few years, I’ve been impressed by how so many young people are at aware of the importance of repairing the environment and building a future where the use of a wide spectrum of renewable energy sources needs to become common place. Watching the recent news about the crisis for American auto manufacturers and it is clear that the idea of green or sustainable design is considered pivotal to reviving the U.S. and world economies.

So I had this notion of green but wanted to learn more. One great resource was from the U.S. Green Building Council.  One of the tabs on their site is “Green 101”. I really liked how the information in this “intro class” is presented- clear and straight to the point. Here are two points that I used in a power point presentation to some local businesses.

“Creating a green school involves more than buildings. Green schools can offer students a living laboratory for learning about the environment”.

“To the extent that teachers are able to perceive and take advantage of green learning opportunities, their students will be better prepared for the world that is waiting for them after graduation”. 

Those two points tie in directly to what I was suggesting in a previous blog on 21st century skills. It seems as though promoting green schools can be a win-win-win proposition.  Students and teachers can work in a healthy environment, the actions that benefit the schools have a direct positive impact on the global environment and by making schools “living laboratories”, we create a context for relevant learning that offers kids the chance to develop the full spectrum of 21st century skills.

In December I will be attending the California Green Schools Summit and I’m excited about what I’ll be learning. A number of the sessions will focus on green themed curriculum for K-12.  Since many of you have experience with products such as Autodesk Design Academy or Autodesk DesignKids where green has been incorporated as a major theme, I’m hoping that you would share some of your class activities on this blog. Because students are really intrigued with the concepts of green and sustainability, we are presented with new opportunities for some exciting problem based learning experiences. Key to accomplishing this is a committment to share learning resources. Hope to hear from you on this.

Autodesk and VEX Robotics- Promoting 21st Century Skills

Download grassroots_robotics_r010209_2.pdf

In my posting on 21st century job skills I noted that organizations such as Partnership for 21st Century Skills and Jobs for the Future stress that in order to prepare students for the realities of work in a global economy they need to develop a unique set of skills that are difficult to master in a traditional classroom setting. These skills are built upon core academics to include learning and thinking skills, creativity, information and communications technology (ICT) literacy skills and life skills. In order to achieve this, school will need to look more like the world of work where students are challenged to solve relevant problems.

In my constant search for examples of programs that are making great strides in helping students develop 21st century skills, I came across an interesting article about the new VEX EDR Autodesk curriculum in Robot Magazine. Lewis Chappelearat at James Monroe High School in North Hills, California talks about how he is working to bridge the gap between school and the real world. Chappelearat won the 2008 California Teacher of the Year award and has been developing the Robotics Academy at his site where he is now adopting the new VEX EDR Autodesk curriculum. I was struck by this quote from the article: “In a school in which not all the kids are there to become engineers, doctors and lawyers, robotics nonetheless brings absolute relevance to the classroom. Robotics gets all of the kids excited about learning, and it also teaches the “soft skills” they will need in life and to keep jobs—working as a team, problem solving, working with the community”.

In describing his enthusiasm for this new curriculum Chappelearat noted that “Autodesk is more Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)-related than robot competition-related, which is what I think it should be”. From my perspective,he really nails this one. While some students may discover through the curriculum that they are drawn to an engineering career path involving robotics, that is not the most valuable aspect of the learning experiences facilitated by the curriculum.  What really counts is how such a curriculum supports students in developing 21st century skills related to relevant problem solving, thinking critically, sequencing ideas, using imagination, acquiring technological literacy and expanding a host of high and low tech communication and collaboration skills. The argument for supporting the adoption of innovative educational programs such as the VEX EDR Autodesk curriculum should be based on supporting our students to be prepared for life and work in the global economy where success resides in their ability to remain flexible and adapt to the unprecedented level of technological change that will shape the 21st century.